virus?
 

well i turned on my computer today and there is something wrong with it. first my charting platform wouldn't connect to the feed. now itunes won't load. i can't get windows media player to play any music. I did a virus scan and found nothing. I checked for malware and got nothing. It has windows 7 so I just use the windows essentials and malwarebytes. Even malwarebytes I had to reinstall. any idea on what may be wrong? thanks in advance

Have you tried rolling it back a day or two with System Restore?

Yup and it won't let me go back. I can't update my malware bytes either. It won't let me open any anti virus programs other them windows essentials which is useless (did 4 scans already and each one takes 45 minutes!)
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Easiest solution here: Probably a clean install.

Trend Macro has a scan called House Call you can do for free through an internet browser. You could give that a try. It saved my old comp once or twice when it was that far gone.

If that won't work. Sadly, clean install.

wow this sucks balls. how can I back this computer up so that if something goes wrong I can literally go back in time and every single file (virus, new installs etc.) will all be deleted and back to that point in time? is this possible?

You can set times backup points on your comp (mine runs at like three am once a week). I also stick a flashdrive in the side of mine and it backs up critical folders/programs to that nightly and I just swap them every few days for a clean one (so that I always have a non corrupt version always handy). I do this on my work and home comps so if I ever have to do a clean install I at least have my critical files saved.

It's also a good idea to do a complete backup to an external source now and then. That's why the data storage sites are handy where you upload your backup to a server somewhere, or you can use an external hard drive (they come up to like 1000G now, you can back up several comps to one).

Try running malware bytes, super anti spyware, microsoft essentials in safe mode.

which program do you use to do this? i need the important folders backed up. I lost MANY hours of work today. every time I would restart it would get even worse!

take the drive out, put it as a slave on another pc and virus scan there.

Backup points can be set to run by microsoft itself, at least in XP and Vista. IIRC it's in your control panel. It's been so long since I set it up I can't recall, I believe it's in the Schedualed Tasks. You can also do this manually by going into Performance & Maintenance and then 'System Restore' and 'Create a restore point'.

The critical file back up is something my tech guy here at the company I work for made for us at the accounting department. We just plug in what folders we want backed up and and it does it every night. He put a copy on my personal laptop as well cause I take work home with me. (You can use Schedualed Tasks in your control panel to run your spy ware and stuff nightly too, I do this as well on my work comp)

You can (and should) manually do this with important files any how. Flashdrives are cheap cheap cheap. Have three or four 4G flashdrives on hand at all times. Any time you're working on something important save a back up onto the FD every half hour or so. Just save to your flash drive rather then to 'my documents' or what ever. Once you get in the habit of saving after every important change you stop thinking about doing it all the time and then if you're comp crashes you can pull the flash drive and resume working on another computer (provided the file itself isn't corrupt).

Also if you work on Microsoft Office 2007 (and probably on 2010) it does auto save periodically, so at least in the case of a sudden power outage or comp problem you have something backed up within the last hour (this happens to me a lot with my work comp and the new version of office has saved my sanity often). But the auto save is to your c: drive so it won't help you in the event that you've lost that. You can alter this if you click on the Office icon and then go down to 'excell' (or windows or what ever' options. It will let you change your path way and your frequency.

Microsoft has backup software build in as well so if you wanna do a complete backup to an external drive you should be able to just 'run backup' iirc. But it depends which version you're running. In XP it's 'performance and maintenance -> Back up your data'

whenever things F-up. I take it out, and plug it into another PC, usually solves most problems.

Scans/Retrieving documents, all that fun stuff.